Monday, 12 August 2013

Strategy is not a plan you implement. Strategy is a three-fold skill set you learn along the road Ctowards desired results. You learn these skills by practicing, contemplating and practicing. In other words, the way one masters an art.

The first skill is to unconditionally accept uncertainty on the road towards a desired result.

The second skill is to see the unique possibility that will help us gain a decisive advantage along the road towards the desired result.

The third skill is to timely exploit that unique possibility to gain this decisive advantage on the road towards the desired result.

The principles of the way of the strategy

In 1645 Miyamoto Musashi wrote the Book of The Five Rings. A manual on strategy for samurai. In his introduction he explains that this strategy also has guided his mastering of other skills and arts. Some of his calligraphy and drawings can still be admired in Japanese museums. Over the years his book has become a source of inspiration not only for those specializing in martial arts but also for modern managers and politicians.

How to most effectively reach your goal?

Strategy is about how to most effectively reach your goal. Most communicators concentrate on tools: brochures, videos, photo exhibitions. The question is: will that help us reach our goals? Frogleaps often gets the question: what is a strategic communication? The true answer: it is a way of life!

Value the use of tools

We paraphrase Musashi. A strategy for effective communication is not different from a strategy for success in business development or war. If you don’t appreciate strategy, you won’t value the use of tools. Each situation is different and does not stay the same. Before you communicate you have to analyze it, including the context and key people.

Then define success.

Understand the context, your options and timing

Each situation may ask for a different tool, set of tools or a different use or timing of the tools. The main tool is speech. You master it when listening becomes hearing.Then you also know how to use the other written media. The other tool is drawing. You master it when looking becomes seeing. Then you also know how to use the other visual media.

Planning is key

The success of a strategy is not in the plan but in the planning. It is professional way of life. The principles of the way of the strategy, according to Musashi, are:

Always be honest.

Keep on practicing and learning.

Become acquainted with every art.

Know the mindset of all professions.

In worldly affairs go for the result.

Develop your intuitive judgment and understanding for every person or situation.

2 Responses to “What is strategy?”

For starters I can agree to the jest of the notes published. I do however feel that strategy is so much more than just providing the ultimate means of getting to a next position or level.

And it being a skill to acquire. It does give the concept of strategy a different and more manageable feeling, however this focus on how to go about construing a strategy and not answer the question of “what a strategy?” really is.

If one scours the web one tends to get a definition of strategy per person which sort of confirms that no one really sat down and worked through the angles to define what strategy is. WordWeb define is as “An elaborate and systematic plan of action” Which is as good as it gets but still come up short because “action” might not be a good tactic in a specific situation. Sitting, waiting might be better responses ( Although semantically it is still activities I would succumb to the more passive nature of these)

That’s for now but I would suggest that one takes another route to actually defining strategy.

Yes – in Western thinking we normally see a strategy as a plan. In business, project management – especially for conservation and sustainable development – this often leads to lengthy documents. I just read a ninety page communication strategy of a large international conservation organization for an international congress. I doubt whether many people will read it, let alone use it. That is why – when asked what is a strategy – I like to go back to the origins of the word and to the most famous treatises on strategy.

Strategia in ancient Greek language literally means leadership of an army in war (stratos). Such leadership implies planning and taking decisions to define targets and allocate resources to attain and maintain a position of advantage over adversaries or to outright win the war (and conquer the enemy) in the most effective way. Strategy always deals with uncertainties and trying to get a decisive competetive advantage. In their strategic planning leaders often use scenarios and strategems to test various approaches to maximize one’s own security while trying to accomplish specific targets.

The strategy of Xenophon – a vision and the principle of decentralisation of command. In the 4th century BC Xenophon’s leadership of the largely outnumbered and under-resourced Greek army of ten thousand mercenaries during its retreat from Persia to Greece was largely based on a clear and common shared goal (get safely back home together) and a decentralised command, which made it possible to realize quick and flexible solutions to any obstacle or surprise the army encountered. You can call that Xenophon’s strategy. And it worked as is illustrated in his ‘Anabasis’, his recollection of the experiences during the retreat of the Ten Thousand. Afterwards such strategies based on vision and principles were succesfully practiced, e.g. last century by General Giap during the Vietnam war.

Strategy: principles, attitudes and skills to gain a competitive advantage
Giap based himself on the writings of Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu was a Chinese general and philosopher who lived in the century before Xenophon. He wrote a treatise the ‘Art of War’, based on his experience during the ‘Warring States period’. Apart from analyzing the terrain and the opponent, the treatise also stresses and explains the skills and attitudes of a competent leader. In the 8th century AD the Art of War was introduced into Japan. It influenced the writings of Miyamoto Musashi, the famous samurai, who wrote his treatise on strategy – The Five Rings – in the 17th century. It is Musashi who I quote when describing the principles of strategy.

Strategy as change leadership
The closest a definition of strategy would come to this idea of principles and skillsets or ‘a way of life’ is maybe to define strategy as change leadership. Such definition also would recognize the fact that conservation and sustainable development in reality means dealing with change. And to realize change effectively you need the right leadership or strategy.

Friday, 2 August 2013

Looking the tiger in the eye. Seeing nature on film can still give you a powerful experience: this is almost the last shot of a short video by Erlinda Kartika about the release of a stray tiger in Sumatra.

Positive Change

A sustainable future requires change at all levels. Change is an individual and emotional event – that depends on collective actions for success. Deep listening, communication, learning and facilitation can help to create the will to cooperate: the key to trigger positive behaviour change.